Mush Hole Project
ADDITIONAL MATERIALS - Poster
Project Website
Artist Statement
Project Summary
To come closer to one’s own buried past, one must act like an excavator. Above all, one mustn’t be afraid of coming back to the same point time and time again – to spread it like one spreads the earth, to churn it like one churns the soil.
Walter Benjamin, Excavating and Remembering
The objective of the Mush Hole Project is to engage with the site of Canada’s first
residential school as a space in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists and
scholars can meet and 1) acknowledge the residential school legacy, 2) challenge the
concepts of “truth” and “reconciliation,” and 3) practice interdisciplinary art and
performantive methods of decolonization. Details of the three central objectives are as
follows:
. Acknowledge Residential School Legacy: Blanche Hill-Easton, a survivor from
“the Mush Hole,” explains “there's pain in remembering, but there's power, too.”
When individuals seek accountability and the perpetrator does not acknowledge
the wrongdoing, there is an empty space, a gap, and a shadow that haunts us.
Acknowledgement, on the other hand, and the integration of Indigenous
epistemologies is the beginning step across the chasm (of unknowing to
knowing) in order to cast new light on histories that continue to be ignored. The
segregated spatial language and logic of residential schools, in its naturalized
homogeneity, separates out and eliminates individual identity, race, class,
ethnicity, and gender; language authorizes states of power (science, church, and
nation), unlimited access to private minds and bodies, and their subsequent
misrepresentation with no public accountability. The concealed structure of the
residential school thereby becomes a metaphor for its own history. This site-
specific work intends to critique and make visible not only institutionalized
violence, but also it will attempt to unshroud the negation of life and death by
examining the complex separations that took place within and outside the walls
of the Mohawk Institute, in order to find paths toward decolonization.
. Reflect, Question & Challenge: Differing perspectives between the colonizer
and Aboriginal peoples require the surrendering of our pre-conceived notions of
the very nature of history – that is linear, progressive, date-and event-oriented–
and adapting our thinking to a fundamentally different Aboriginal world-view
which is cyclical and ultimately timeless. The challenge to decolonize
perspectives thus raises a critical question that is central to the Mush Hole
Project’s objective: how can a creative intervention at a historical site generate
new knowledges and methods of communication? How will the site activate the
willingness to “surrender” pre-conceived notions of education, research, and
practice. In this sense, the Mush Hole Project made space for expressions and
articulations of agency, honouring, and sovereignty.
. Research-Practice: TheMush Hole Project intends to unfold as a ‘cultural lab’,
where artists [and researchers] can struggle creatively with the contemporary
world as well as with traditional forms. The combination of visual art, embodied
knowledge, and a gathering of engaged participants make an experience that
exceeds its colonial container. The container is the systemic structure imposed
by the dominant culture. When structures are identified there is potential for
openings, shifts, or cracks through which transformation might begin to breathe.
Is the subversion of the colonial container an act of decolonization? Does
refusing the dominant culture’s ideological or material constraints equate to
conciliation? Or is this something else? Does it need to be something else? What
happens when ‘the container’ is identified (located) not only externally but also in
one’s self? These are among the questions the Mush Hole Project aims to
address.
As a collaborative research-creation project, members from Indigenous and non-
Indigenous communities from across institutions, fields, disciplines, and communities
worked together for two years, forging sustainable relationships that came to fruition at
the site. The outcomes from this site-specific event were presented at the Integrating
Knowledges Summit (October 14, 15, and 16, 2016), which materialized meaningful and
sustainable resources and methods of education in the process of decolonization. Visit
the Truth and Reconciliation Response Projects website for more information:
More information about UWaterloo Truth and Reconciliation Response Projects
.